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media | MIT Center for Civic Media

Media in the context of civic media work refers to all modes of mass communication: print - newspapers and magazines, broadcast - radio and TV, and internet sites - personal and from organizations. <em>Civic Media</em> are those forms of communication that strengthen the social bonds within a community or create a strong sense of civic engagement among its residents.

Last week, I had the honor of speaking on one of the plenary panels at the Media in Transition conference at MIT. I talked about an idea I've been playing with, identity versus presence in the online space. People seemed interested in hearing a little more, so here are my thoughts on the subject right now.

The theme of the conference was public and private media, and there were lots of amazing panels talking about, in one way or another, performances, manifestations, usurpations, and repurposings of identity online. The presentations were brilliant, but as I'm coming down off of writing my masters thesis on activist DDOS actions (ten days till final submission!), I found myself thinking about the concept of "presence," and how the online space, and the civic space in general, is and is not structured to allow manifestations of presence over performances of identity.

Did you know there's a level of Dots Per Inch after which your eye simply cannot see any difference? Any added level of detail isn't perceptible to you unless you select an area to zoom in on, changing the inches over which the dots are distributed.

This is what came to mind when listening to the Oversharing Forum at Media In Transition 8 conference at MIT's Media Lab. The speakers covered EverydayCarry, the panopticon, and quantitative self. The point was brought up of how you must always assume you are being surveilled, and it only takes one person in a group to be recording for the entire group to be documented. The responsibility was bandied from the person recording to the person being recorded, to the person sharing, to the spaces themselves have default settings for recording (or not) (think theaters vs conferences). Zittrain brought up that the only way to NOT be recorded is to not do anything notable, and that is a long dark path of social blandness and fragility.

There are many problems with using commercial technology platforms to host democratic, social, or activist content and communications. These problems came up in multiple sessions at the National Conference on Media Reform last weekend. There are also obvious reasons to continue using these platforms (audience reach, most notably), and so we do. Some activist efforts that silo communications on more open, but relatively unknown platforms strike me as irresponsible, if the goal is to reach as many people as possible (but this is a fine line). The more I think about this issue, though, the more I see potential solutions and a future in working with the platform providers to build some degree of flexibility into their products and policies.

My Media Lab Master's thesis argues that information and communication technologies, and particularly the web, have expanded the range of ways the public can help in times of crisis, even (or especially) if we're nowhere near said crisis. Or, to be more formal about it, participatory aid is mutual, peer-to-peer aid mediated or powered by information and communication technology. We're building a platform to help coordinate participatory aid projects, but first, I wanted to share some examples.

Too long, didn’t read: You can use this Ruby script to query Archive.org’s recently-launched TVNews archive and download JSON files with the results. It’s great for tracking how frequently a person or topic shows up in U.S. televised news broadcasts.

Photo: Brian McGrory, editor of The Boston Globe, and Ethan Zuckerman at the Center for Civic Media, 03/21/13

This is a liveblog by Catherine, Erhardt and Rodrigo and may contain errors and typos. Feel to correct typos, add useful links and references. You can watch a live-prezi of the talk by Willow Brugh at the bottom of the article.

Ethan Zuckerman starts his introduction of Brian by describing the Center's partnership with the Globe, and explains that the Globe is undergoing a transition in editorial, ownership and strategy.

When we really care about a community in crisis, there's a lot more we can do than give money to a formal aid organization. In fact, the range of activities we CAN do to help, even remotely, is much greater and richer than it has ever been before.

For my Media Lab Master's thesis, I'm looking at all of the new ways people can help each other in times of crisis (mutual aid), and how information & communication technology (the internet) has amplified this peer aid.

Data visualization is all over the place. On the hype curve, we’re clearly up in the area of inflated expectations. If you listen to the reporting, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking dataviz is going to bring world peace! I’m writing to beat the drum in favor of more informal presentations. You can tell better data stories, and engage your audience more, by creating less formal data presentations.

This semester for a class on HCI, I have been looking at dual screen experience that people interact with mobile devices while watching TV in China. I collected over 1 million Sina Weibo messages during 'Chunwan' (春晚), a state sponsored TV program to celebrate Chinese New Year, which is also a popular cultural event that almost everyone in China participates. While the social engagement aspect of this study is still ongoing, for now one of the side findings from this data is quite worth-noting:

Within this data, over 60% users are female on Sina Weibo, but male users are almost twice likely to have a large number of followers(over 5000) than their female counterpart.

In the introduction, it's mentioned that AllAfrica is hosting the anniversary of USA4Africa We Are the World, and will promote crowdsourced versions of the song (parody away).

Amadou Mahtar (@amahtarba) of AllAfrica and African Media Initiative speaks on the use of the Internet and technology in Africa as levers for democracy and economic and social change. Technology is pointless, Amadou says, unless it improves human life, particularly in the context of the African continent.

Amadou provides a disclaimer that his talk today is more of a religion than a science. It comes from his personal belief in greater connectivity to provide greater economic and human development.